Real Estate

The year we're about to leave - for some, maybe forget - saw several noteworthy business-related events in Central Massachusetts, but here's our consensus selections for the top five stories of 2014. As a staff, we unanimously agreed on the top story. There was little debate over the remaining four.

Home prices in Massachusetts rose modestly in November while sales were about flat compared with November 2013, according to data in the monthly report by The Warren Group of Boston.

Three building trades groups representing 84,000 workers in Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire released a statement Monday endorsing Kinder Morgan's proposed Northeast Energy Direct underground natural gas pipeline project.

While residential real estate in the Bay State continues to recover, 2014 saw commercial organizations grabbing office...

There was more optimism among Central Massachusetts business leaders heading into 2014. There's even more heading into 2015. Here are the results of this year's Economic Forecast survey, along with out predictions for the year ahead and our report card on how our predictions for 2014 turned out.

Year-over-year housing sales in New England decreased 8 percent last month, according to the RE/MAX of New England November Monthly Housing Report.

The Town of Hudson announced it has received an award from the Massachusetts chapter of the American Planning Association for the master plan adopted by the Planning Board in November. The Outstanding Planning Award recognizes a plan, program or process of “unusually high merit” from a municipality with a population of less than 50,000, according to a statement from the town. Plans were judged on five criteria: innovation, quality, transferability, implementation and comprehensiveness.

The Brigham Business Park in Marlborough has been sold for $14.5 million, according to commercial real estate firm Avison Young.

The U.S. housing market showed signs of contraction last month as the annual rates of housing starts, completions and the number of issued building permits fell from October, the federal government announced Tuesday.

A number of Massachusetts cities and towns with separate property tax rates for homes and businesses are pursuing or recently adopted rates that close the gap between the two groups, if not one rate for everyone. Framingham is among them, but MetroWest's largest town faces a long haul. Robert Halpin, the town manager hired in 2012, has recognized the town's large tax disparity between businesses as a major hindrance to economic development. He and the town finance department have pushed a three-year plan to cap the tax burden on businesses at 40 percent of the total tax base. As the commercial tax base grows, that will lower the factor, the amount of the burden shifted to commercial property owners. After a tax classification hearing last week, the factor is 1.71, down from 1.74 last year.